In early 2013, Fu Ping published her autobiography Bend, Not Break, coauthored with Meimei Fox. The book, along with her media interviews, has been found to contain many exaggerations, distortions, and fabrications. Fu Ping has responded by claiming to be a victim of a "smear campaign" of ulterior motives.

This blog documents the facts, questions, and falsehoods behind her book and words.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Questionable Fact: Fu Ping's Forced Return to Nanjing

The Original Story:
Fu Ping devoted Pages 17 to 31 of Bend, Not Break to the first real dramatic story of her life: one day shortly after her 8th birthday in late summer of 1966, she was

shocked by the revelation that her Shanghai parents are not her real parents

forcefully removed from her Shanghai home and sent back to Nanjing

witnessed her Nanjing parents being sent away amid a very chaotic street scene

became the caretaker of her 4-year-old sister Hong

In subsequent interviews with various media, she repeated the same story many times, only occasionally differed in small details. In particular, she likes to state that, "on that same day, I lost the parents who raised me, I lost the parents who born me, and I became the surrogate mother to my little sister."

The Debunking:

The biggest question of this story is of course its premise: Fu Ping had lived in Shanghai since days after her birth till 8th birthday and that she did not know who her biological parents were. That itself is very questionable.

The earlier version of her autobiography, Drifting Bottle, describes a happy childhood she lived with her biological parents in Nanjing.

But even if we ignore this glaring issue, there are still quite a few telling tales that her story was made up. In the next few posts, we will go through some of them in detail as we debunk this story.